Contrary to what the mainstream media has been reporting recently, accidental gun deaths are not at an all-time high. In fact, gun-related deaths are at their lowest in decades.
Even Fox News was fooled by false data from the Center for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) when the network reported: “In 2017, nearly 40,000 people were killed from gun-related incidents in the U.S., according to the data. By contrast, gun-related incidents accounted for less than 29,000 deaths in 1999.”
That report continued by listing several of the higher profile shootings of 2017, such as shootings and death of 25 people at a Texas church in November of that year followed by a shooting spree that took the lives of 58 at a concert of 22,000 concert-goers.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) set the record straight in its blog last month showing that gun-related deaths are down 41 percent since 1999, the year referenced by the CDC. NSSF noted:
[The CDC report] is understandably confusing when recent news articles proclaim that “guns killed more people than car crashes in 2017.” While this kind of clickbait is sure to get views, it is a deliberately misleading comparison of different data. In this article, for example, the authors take the full sum of all firearms-related deaths, suicides, homicides and accidents, and compares it to car accidents. Why not compare firearms accidents to car accidents? Well that would show that car accidents occur at far higher rates (11.9 for cars compared to 0.1 for firearms).
NSSF commended the CDC report reporting, “thankfully, the CDC breaks down the data by unintentional fatalities, homicides, and suicides,” thereby making “a careful review of the data possible.”
But that is where the compliments for the government agency end. There are many curious omissions and anomalies in the CDC report that skewer the truth. For example, the agency’s statistics show the nations’ homicide rate has flattened, while other research shows the U.S. homicide rate to be on a downward trend.
The FBI’s annual Crime in the United States in 2013 revealed a far different picture than the CDC. The U.S. violent crime rate fell to its lowest since 1978, and murder and manslaughter rate to its lowest rate since 1968.
Another factor overlooked by most in the mainstream media is that gun-related homicides are concentrated in a few counties. The CDC reported in April 2017 that over half the counties (57%) in the country had zero murders whereas 2% had 51% of all gun-related murders that year. 69% of U.S. counties had only one gun-related homicide. The top 1% of counties with gun-related murders were home to 19% of the population. Those same counties are responsible for 37% of all gun-related homicides in the nation.
Unreported by the media is that the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) shows that:
In 2014, the murder rate was 4.4 per 100,000 people. If the 1% of the counties with the worst number of murders somehow were to become a separate country, the murder rate in the rest of the US would have been only 3.4 in 2014. Removing the worst 2% or 5% would have reduced the US rate to just 3.06 or 2.56 per 100,000, respectively.
Break that same report down a little further and one finds even the counties with the highest gun-death rate have only a few areas that comprise the great majority of those crimes.
- Los Angeles County had 526 murders in 2014, the most of any county in the US. However, Los Angeles County had only three murders in the northwestern part of the county – one each in Beverly Hills, Hawthorne, and Van Nuys.
- Indianapolis had 135 murders the same year. Even though that city extends far beyond HWY 465 that surrounds the city, only found homicides occurred outside the loop. Even within the loop, the northern half of the city has few murders.
- In Chicago of the 222 homicides, it saw in the first 4.5 months of 2017, the small neighborhood of Austin accounted for 35 murders while 23 of the 77 neighborhoods in the city had zero murders.
Every gun related death is tragic but gun-related crimes are low for a country of 327 million people and 90 million gun owners. If only the media could report with any honesty, all would know that.
Dr Prescribed Prescriptions the #1 killer in American as far as I am concerned over HALF MILLION DEATHS(look it up) per year and has been like that for DECADES. And yet they do nothing about it gets worse every year
can’t have 57% with zero muders and 69% with one murder. You need to get your numbers straight, errors like this take away any credibility, it doesn’t help
I was thinking the same thing, Carl.
Carl,
The author’s entire point was that the rendering of the data even by CDC is done in a way that its confusing and deceptive and that the media fails to understand or does not wish to tell the actual truth regarding these stats. The statistics stated WERE THOSE GIVEN.
And they COULD be correct if taken with a simple proviso: that the statement is 1 or less deaths and zero deaths:
That would mean that there are 69% with a maximum of one death, 57% with zero deaths…that means that there were 12% with one death (a simpler way to state it).
Taking the information as stated by CDC and copy/pasting can cause real issues. I ran across this with data sets regarding felons from many government agencies and sponsored researches. The data sets were arranged and stated to make a point, not to give information.
The most telling stat the stat that is missing but true: that the same cities that are the root of the statistic ( the 1% of counties that have 37% of deaths in the nation are the SAME COUNTIES with the most gun control and least 2A rights.
Those counties have a death rate 37 times as much as 69% of the country! Any person of minimal intelligence and education can easily see that there is a direct cause and effect correlation. In a place where one KNOWS they must protect themselves and not rely on police there is less likelihood of death by gun. In a place that RELIES on police and takes away the right of a citizen to self-protect there is a high likelihood of death by gun.
Another interesting Stat, in the areas of highest murder rate in the USA, the death stats DWARF military loss statistics! This means that those living there are in a WAR zone and not allowed to protect themselves!
FOR THOSE MURDER HOT SPOTS TRUMP SHOULD DECLARE A NATIONAL EMERGENCY AND ORDER ALL MURDERS PUT TO DEATH! THE RATE WILL THEN FALL!